Friday, December 4, 2009

The WTO protests in Seattle: Phony opposition to oppression is in fact support for Oppression.

"The character of reformism is based on unprincipled class collaboration with our enemy"- Black Liberation Army (BLA).

The WTO protests were a major failure of the so-called "progressive" forces. I have been listening to all kinds revisionists re-tell the history on KBCS and elsewhere all week during this the 10 anniversary.

Many of these folks forget that I WAS THERE ALSO from DAY ONE (as in day one of the first organizing meetings of the Direct Action Network and Seattle Independent Media Center).

Unlike many of them, I did not use the event as means of "career advancement"!

Key events left out of the commentaries, include (but are not limited to):

* Open hostility to, and attempted sabotage of the participation of, the African-American Heritage Museum struggle by the so-called "left" in Seattle.

*The failure of organized labor to make good on their promise of a general strike during the event, despite hot rhetoric from local labor leaders prior to the event, as well as hostility to the idea by socialist organizations (specifically the International Socialist Organization), due to sectarianism and organizational cultism.

* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the "leaders" of the Direct Action Network.

* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the Olympia IWW.

* The racist depictions of black protesters as "looters" vs. the depictions of the white anarchists as "expropriators" by the Seattle IMCs newspaper.

* David Solnit calling for the arrest of "violent anarchists" at the joint press conference hosted by his organization and the Seattle IWW.